Does a brief virtual dose of an environment affect subjective wellbeing and judgements of perceived restorativeness? Considering the role of place preference

What the study found

Tests whether a short virtual exposure shifts wellbeing and perceived restorativeness, and whether an individual's preferred environment type moderates that response, rather than treating nature as restorative for everyone equally.

Limitations

Brief virtual exposure rather than occupancy. Self-report outcomes. Details of effect size not extracted from the full text.

Neurodesign interpretation

A useful corrective to the flat claim that nature restores. The comparison condition and the occupant's own preference are both doing work that usually goes unreported.

Possible design implications

Hypothesis: restorative response may depend partly on who the occupant is and what they prefer, which argues against a single restorative specification applied to a whole population.

Study design

Experimental comparison of short virtual environmental exposures, testing place preference as a moderator

Population

Adults

Setting

Brief virtual exposure to environment types

Field

Environmental psychology, restorative environments

Mechanism

Perceived restorativeness, place preference, environment type congruence

Spatial variable

Environment type (nature versus urban), brief exposure duration

Keywords

restorative environments, place preference, nature versus urban, contrast, wellbeing, virtual exposure

Notes and follow-up

TKTK effect sizes and sample size from the full text. Attribution note: this paper is by Wilkie, Platt and Trotter. The contrast and place-preference work attributed to Wilkie and Delicato appears to be a 2023 conference presentation rather than this article, so confirm which source is meant before citing.